Silicones are general-purpose materials having various advantages such as low intermolecular interaction, low reactivity, no toxicity or irritation, low friction coefficient, high lubricity, low viscosity, high plasticity, high insulation, and the like, and have been used in various industrial fields. However, silicones also carry the disadvantages that they are less compatible with aqueous solvents due to the high hydrophobicity thereof and extremely poorer in the wettability and the adsorptivity onto the surface of highly polar inorganic compounds, hair, skin, fabrics and other substrates. Another problems is that although the affinity to aqueous solvents may be improved to some degree by introducing polyethylene oxide chains, i.e., by the so-called polyether modification, it requires a large amount of the modifier as the polyethylene oxide group is inherently lower in hydrophilicity, thus leading to the relative decrease in the content of silicone and significantly impairing the advantages inherent in silicones. Highly polar functional groups such as an amino group and the like have been used as a modifier for improvement of the wettability and adsorptivity onto various media, but such groups also carried the problems of specific irritating odor, yellowing over time, and the like.
There were some reports on silicone compounds having a glycerol group. Japanese Patent Publication (JP-A) No. 57-149290 discloses a method of producing a silicone compound having polyglycerol groups via oxyalkylene groups as the connecting group, while JP-A No. 9-278892 discloses a silicone compound having polyglycerol groups via ester groups as the connecting group and a method of producing the same.
In addition, JP-A Nos. 10-316526 and 9-71504 disclose the applications thereof to cosmetics. All these applications utilize the silicones modified with polyglycerol groups that are aligned linearly in straight chains.